A
Anonymous
Guest
To all:
It is at their peril that any decide that something automatically does not merit investigation because it is too small, too simple, or outlandish.
Many, if not most, people can claim experience with the type of person who literally cannot do anything right. It is not that they cannot learn a skill, or just approach an action advisedly. It is that, no matter what they do, when they do it, how they do it, it will be troublesome, even disastrous, for those near them.
If you needed your car for a particularly important engagement, and they did not even know you planned to use it, you can bet that they will suddenly find a need to take the car for themselves. And more than that, they will take the car without even telling anyone they were going to take it, before anyone was even awake! And, for the first time ever, they will not leave a number where they can be reached!
If you had a particularly important appointment, and they were driving you to it, even though they had never used a certain exit from the highway, to try to get to where you needed to go, and even though there was no reason to expect the exit will get you there in time, they will still take it! And, it will turn out, a lumber truck will have dropped several pieces of lumber, with long nails sticking out, all over the exit, only five minutes before!
If you kept a bolt of a special cloth around for years, looking for the right pattern to use it in, the day you find it, such an individual will have given it away the day before! And it will have been to a stranger they never met before, so you won’t be able to get it back!
The day they decide to leave someone else’s book open, in the back yard, there will be a sudden downpour!
If you kept and tended, patiently, a grape vine for years, looking toward the day you could harvest it, in the spring of the very year it was set to fruit, before it started to blossom, they will suddenly feel it would “beautify” the garden to have the vines all chopped down and carted away!
Given something to bring back home, because it was, actually, something borrowed from someone else, and those people were now anxious to get it back, for the first time ever, they will decide to use public transportation to get home, and conveniently leave the items behind, when they got off!
In fact, experiences with such individuals do not require that you be related to them or closely associated with them. Such places as the supermarket can subject you to numerous separate incidents, by numerous such individuals, in even a short period of time!
Walking down an aisle, softly, with other sounds much louder than you, approaching such a person from behind, you can be certain they will, suddenly, find it necessary to turn their cart catty-cornered, blocking half the aisle, then, reaching across, and blocking the other half of the aisle, they will try to grab something they could have gotten much more easily by walking over to it! And they will stand for a number of seconds, trying to accomplish this stunt!
Walking down an aisle, softly, behind such a person, but on the other side of the aisle, just as you reach them, they will suddenly find it necessary to turn around, at top speed, and ram their cart head-on into yours!
Walking down an aisle, behind such an individual, with no room on the other side of the aisle to pass them, they will suddenly find it necessary to stop short, forcing you to crash into them!
That such events are, in fact, very much a commonplace, and, more than that, not entirely random. There are certain individuals with reputation of being just the kind who will encumber, inconvenience or imperil those around them; people who, in fact, can be guaranteed to do just such a thing, given even less than half a chance!
This does not take into account incidents of outright consideration such as leaving a cart in the middle of an aisle, then walking away. That can be motivated by passive/aggressiveness, or just plain aggressiveness. But, that, too, could, just as well, be an example of someone acting to inconvenience those they are not even aware - directly! - are coming.
That there are such people essentially chronically prone to causing disasters for others is not questioned, at least, not in secret. Placing it in the realm of what is termed “traditional science”, however, is not generally pursued by behaviorists or others. They may make half-hearted stabs at someone “catching a glimpse of someone walking up behind them and panicking”; “picking up on subtle clues to other’s plans”; or “being so perpetually in motion that the odds are they will always be in someone else’s way”! To apply a regular proclivity toward courting disaster for someone else to someone, however, is something they will not attempt.
One significant reason is the mechanism.
In order to assert that someone is, literally, a walking accident waiting to happen requires explaining how they can choose to do just exactly the one thing that will undo plans of which they were not even directly aware! “Traditional scientists” would be willing, apparently, to even ascribe some form of psychic quality to the troublemakers, in order to explain their reliable interference with plans that no one informed them of. But that would still beg the question of why they always act to inhibit, or ruin, those plans, and never to facilitate them!
A different explanation is, apparently, needed, and, based on the sheer overridingly intrusive nature of such individuals’ actions, that explanation will have to invoke some concepts “traditional science” apparently considers uncomfortably fundamental.
A suggestion can be found in looking at what such individuals’ actions work to bring about. In all such cases, their deeds result in the effective scrambling of well-prepared plans, and universally seem to necessitate those affected having to change their minds.
In recent years, it has been suggested that the process of “changing plans” - altering intentions, based on suddenly arising circumstances - can release heat. Eliminating previous schema and scenarios for entirely new ones is suggested to involve releases of energy, and that is supposed to give rise to a thermal flow.
And, certainly, the sheer aggravation such actions can cause can be a significant source of thermal energy.
More than that, though, interfering with, and stopping, a pre-planned, orderly process, can be represented as increasing randomness.
In other words, those prone to disastrous mistakes serve to increase randomness and heat content, in other words, to enhance entropy.
The steady increase in entropy is defined as a basic law of, at least, the inanimate part of the universe. All mindless particles seem to act only to increase the randomness and uncertainty of matter.
And this may be the crux of the situation.
People often describe those perennially given to causing disasters as being “thoughtless” or “acting without thinking”. That’s used to describe their failure to consider the consequences of their actions, but it may have a deeper truthfulness, and significance.
“Traditional science” tends to represent living, thinking beings as acting in opposition to entropy. Where unthinking matter may tend to increase the uncertainty around it, thinking beings, typically, supposedly, bring things together in some form of desired manner, act toward a wished result.
The question arises of the result of something like a human body being all but utterly absent of inherent impulse, devoid, literally, of thinking. Possessed, under any circumstance, of an abundance of energy, and what seems a kind of means of translating that energy into coherent action, even being empty of thought, it seems a human body would still engage in deeds. With no volition guiding the translating of energy into what can be termed intelligent action, however, they would be guided by whatever “influence” was available to take its place.
And, “traditional science” asserts, among the most fundamental of these is the tendency to increase entropy!
And this presumed tendency has characteristics similar to the seeming “precognition” of the thoughtless. “Traditional science’s” description of the tendency toward randomness and entropy has a sense of “vision at a distance” to it. If you rolled a million pairs of dice, at a million different parts of the universe, then tallied the results, they would, it is presumed, all conform to a predetermined mathematical formula! With no “traditional” communication between them, a million pairs of dice would, in that way, be coordinated to each other! It seems almost to consist of an instantaneous force, acting on them, en masse! Whatever is necessary to establish what “traditional science” defines as randomness, as an increase in entropy, unthinking matter seems ready to do, without even needing to be informed of conditions around them! Humans acting without inherent, personal impulses, and, instead, being, apparently, automatically controlled by the tendency toward randomness, then, will seem to take on these same qualities of doing just exactly whatever is needed to increase entropy, even though uninformed about what is going on around them, or what is planned for the future!
In a way that “traditional science” may find unsettling, then, the rules they define as being so fundamental can result in actions in people that seem to suggest a precognition of things around them! Even if those actions are detrimental to the plans and wishes of those around them!
The phrase “Murphy’s Law” used to be applied to events similar to these. But those are, supposedly, completely unexpected events, coming, essentially, out of the nothingness, from unpredicted events happening purely randomly. These are incidents occasioned by supposedly thinking beings!
Those depicted as “thoughtless”, those who tend to ruin the plans of those near them or routinely impede them, then, can be represented as, effectively, pushing the universe toward the “heat death” that “traditional science” so often mentions. To the extent that that seems the very antithesis of what intelligence tends toward - if not, also, on the basis of the essential lack of consideration of their deeds - the proclivity toward “acting without thinking” should be viewed as something to be combated.
Julian Penrod
It is at their peril that any decide that something automatically does not merit investigation because it is too small, too simple, or outlandish.
Many, if not most, people can claim experience with the type of person who literally cannot do anything right. It is not that they cannot learn a skill, or just approach an action advisedly. It is that, no matter what they do, when they do it, how they do it, it will be troublesome, even disastrous, for those near them.
If you needed your car for a particularly important engagement, and they did not even know you planned to use it, you can bet that they will suddenly find a need to take the car for themselves. And more than that, they will take the car without even telling anyone they were going to take it, before anyone was even awake! And, for the first time ever, they will not leave a number where they can be reached!
If you had a particularly important appointment, and they were driving you to it, even though they had never used a certain exit from the highway, to try to get to where you needed to go, and even though there was no reason to expect the exit will get you there in time, they will still take it! And, it will turn out, a lumber truck will have dropped several pieces of lumber, with long nails sticking out, all over the exit, only five minutes before!
If you kept a bolt of a special cloth around for years, looking for the right pattern to use it in, the day you find it, such an individual will have given it away the day before! And it will have been to a stranger they never met before, so you won’t be able to get it back!
The day they decide to leave someone else’s book open, in the back yard, there will be a sudden downpour!
If you kept and tended, patiently, a grape vine for years, looking toward the day you could harvest it, in the spring of the very year it was set to fruit, before it started to blossom, they will suddenly feel it would “beautify” the garden to have the vines all chopped down and carted away!
Given something to bring back home, because it was, actually, something borrowed from someone else, and those people were now anxious to get it back, for the first time ever, they will decide to use public transportation to get home, and conveniently leave the items behind, when they got off!
In fact, experiences with such individuals do not require that you be related to them or closely associated with them. Such places as the supermarket can subject you to numerous separate incidents, by numerous such individuals, in even a short period of time!
Walking down an aisle, softly, with other sounds much louder than you, approaching such a person from behind, you can be certain they will, suddenly, find it necessary to turn their cart catty-cornered, blocking half the aisle, then, reaching across, and blocking the other half of the aisle, they will try to grab something they could have gotten much more easily by walking over to it! And they will stand for a number of seconds, trying to accomplish this stunt!
Walking down an aisle, softly, behind such a person, but on the other side of the aisle, just as you reach them, they will suddenly find it necessary to turn around, at top speed, and ram their cart head-on into yours!
Walking down an aisle, behind such an individual, with no room on the other side of the aisle to pass them, they will suddenly find it necessary to stop short, forcing you to crash into them!
That such events are, in fact, very much a commonplace, and, more than that, not entirely random. There are certain individuals with reputation of being just the kind who will encumber, inconvenience or imperil those around them; people who, in fact, can be guaranteed to do just such a thing, given even less than half a chance!
This does not take into account incidents of outright consideration such as leaving a cart in the middle of an aisle, then walking away. That can be motivated by passive/aggressiveness, or just plain aggressiveness. But, that, too, could, just as well, be an example of someone acting to inconvenience those they are not even aware - directly! - are coming.
That there are such people essentially chronically prone to causing disasters for others is not questioned, at least, not in secret. Placing it in the realm of what is termed “traditional science”, however, is not generally pursued by behaviorists or others. They may make half-hearted stabs at someone “catching a glimpse of someone walking up behind them and panicking”; “picking up on subtle clues to other’s plans”; or “being so perpetually in motion that the odds are they will always be in someone else’s way”! To apply a regular proclivity toward courting disaster for someone else to someone, however, is something they will not attempt.
One significant reason is the mechanism.
In order to assert that someone is, literally, a walking accident waiting to happen requires explaining how they can choose to do just exactly the one thing that will undo plans of which they were not even directly aware! “Traditional scientists” would be willing, apparently, to even ascribe some form of psychic quality to the troublemakers, in order to explain their reliable interference with plans that no one informed them of. But that would still beg the question of why they always act to inhibit, or ruin, those plans, and never to facilitate them!
A different explanation is, apparently, needed, and, based on the sheer overridingly intrusive nature of such individuals’ actions, that explanation will have to invoke some concepts “traditional science” apparently considers uncomfortably fundamental.
A suggestion can be found in looking at what such individuals’ actions work to bring about. In all such cases, their deeds result in the effective scrambling of well-prepared plans, and universally seem to necessitate those affected having to change their minds.
In recent years, it has been suggested that the process of “changing plans” - altering intentions, based on suddenly arising circumstances - can release heat. Eliminating previous schema and scenarios for entirely new ones is suggested to involve releases of energy, and that is supposed to give rise to a thermal flow.
And, certainly, the sheer aggravation such actions can cause can be a significant source of thermal energy.
More than that, though, interfering with, and stopping, a pre-planned, orderly process, can be represented as increasing randomness.
In other words, those prone to disastrous mistakes serve to increase randomness and heat content, in other words, to enhance entropy.
The steady increase in entropy is defined as a basic law of, at least, the inanimate part of the universe. All mindless particles seem to act only to increase the randomness and uncertainty of matter.
And this may be the crux of the situation.
People often describe those perennially given to causing disasters as being “thoughtless” or “acting without thinking”. That’s used to describe their failure to consider the consequences of their actions, but it may have a deeper truthfulness, and significance.
“Traditional science” tends to represent living, thinking beings as acting in opposition to entropy. Where unthinking matter may tend to increase the uncertainty around it, thinking beings, typically, supposedly, bring things together in some form of desired manner, act toward a wished result.
The question arises of the result of something like a human body being all but utterly absent of inherent impulse, devoid, literally, of thinking. Possessed, under any circumstance, of an abundance of energy, and what seems a kind of means of translating that energy into coherent action, even being empty of thought, it seems a human body would still engage in deeds. With no volition guiding the translating of energy into what can be termed intelligent action, however, they would be guided by whatever “influence” was available to take its place.
And, “traditional science” asserts, among the most fundamental of these is the tendency to increase entropy!
And this presumed tendency has characteristics similar to the seeming “precognition” of the thoughtless. “Traditional science’s” description of the tendency toward randomness and entropy has a sense of “vision at a distance” to it. If you rolled a million pairs of dice, at a million different parts of the universe, then tallied the results, they would, it is presumed, all conform to a predetermined mathematical formula! With no “traditional” communication between them, a million pairs of dice would, in that way, be coordinated to each other! It seems almost to consist of an instantaneous force, acting on them, en masse! Whatever is necessary to establish what “traditional science” defines as randomness, as an increase in entropy, unthinking matter seems ready to do, without even needing to be informed of conditions around them! Humans acting without inherent, personal impulses, and, instead, being, apparently, automatically controlled by the tendency toward randomness, then, will seem to take on these same qualities of doing just exactly whatever is needed to increase entropy, even though uninformed about what is going on around them, or what is planned for the future!
In a way that “traditional science” may find unsettling, then, the rules they define as being so fundamental can result in actions in people that seem to suggest a precognition of things around them! Even if those actions are detrimental to the plans and wishes of those around them!
The phrase “Murphy’s Law” used to be applied to events similar to these. But those are, supposedly, completely unexpected events, coming, essentially, out of the nothingness, from unpredicted events happening purely randomly. These are incidents occasioned by supposedly thinking beings!
Those depicted as “thoughtless”, those who tend to ruin the plans of those near them or routinely impede them, then, can be represented as, effectively, pushing the universe toward the “heat death” that “traditional science” so often mentions. To the extent that that seems the very antithesis of what intelligence tends toward - if not, also, on the basis of the essential lack of consideration of their deeds - the proclivity toward “acting without thinking” should be viewed as something to be combated.
Julian Penrod
